The Fetid Stench of BDS
The bizarre alliance between the far left and far right plays out on Europe’s streets and its blind hatred is focussed on that tiny dot on the Middle Eastern map. Little Israel. With this unholy union of extremists comes a wave of hatred with no credible basis, which gathers strength as it twists and turns truths into lies and facts into gross disinformation. It is BDS and it stands for bullying, discrimination, and sabotage.
Just as a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so too would BDS by any other definition smell as fetid. It is no less a dirty ploy by ill-meaning, Israel-bashing, Jew-hating folk to undermine the credibility, the legality and the fiscal standing of the State of Israel.
In its own words: to use ‘punitive economic means’ to pressure Israel to rectify wrongs done to human rights in the Palestinian Territories.
Perhaps these deluded yet colluded BDS supporters would be better placed to divest their sympathies from the actual poverty-mongering human rights wrongdoers – the Hamas leadership that encourage shaheedism (martyrdom) by even the youngest of children as evidenced by the newly sharpened lust for stabbings of random Israelis, Arabs, tourists, foreign workers or whoever else happens to be going about their innocent business in the wrong place (Israel) at the wrong (anytime at all) time.
But no. The myopic BDS pedlars wheel out their propaganda posters of tearful Palestinian mothers hugging doe-eyed babies (the bloodier the better). They push the Palestinian victimization ticket by portraying the ‘tough guy’ Israeli soldier occupiers in anti-Christ proportions. They turn blind eyes and deaf ears to such wrong-doings.
They gingerly sidestep the spilling of Israeli blood, which is happening at alarmingly increasing rates, and continue to point an accusatory finger at Israel, bolstered by an equally blinkered media machine that continues to contort the grammar in their strap lines to the point of reporting that the poor little terrorist was shot dead, after which he stabbed the victim. Precisely.
This whole BDS debacle is a joke. It is baseless and positively boring. It has been done to death and it lacks integrity. By the very singling out of Israel as the Goliath of the Middle East (when in fact she is a tiny but pertinent David), by calling her the bully, the perpetrator of all things bad in the world, the BDS camp merely highlights its own prejudices and the boycott, divestment and sanctions platform is wearing mightily thin.
So go ask, yes I dare you, any of those Free Palestine flag wavers who prance about outside little Israeli-owned cosmetic shops on UK high streets on windswept Saturdays if they actually know who they are boycotting, why they are demanding sanctions and from what they are divesting and you will hear, by way of a reply, some inflammatory claptrap about all Israelis being child killers.
And worse, is the, ‘oh no, mate, we don’t have any issue with Jews, it’s the bloody Zionists we can’t stand,’ stance adopted by the corduroy jacket-wearing grey-bearded knobs (yes, knobs). You may have met these types, with their Arafat inspired keffiyehs draped around their necks, lurking in derelict doorways flogging the Socialist Worker on British inner city street; they who join the Free Palestine claptrap throng when pickings are thin on anti-fracking marches.
We’ve all experienced them, this gaggle of rent-a-crowd opportunists, die-hard anti-Semites, Roger Waters devotees and belligerent British Muslims, who when challenged to explain their objectives, burst out in a rousing chant of ‘Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea.’ Because, quite simply, they have no idea whatsoever what the hell it is that they are protesting with such conviction.
In these frightening times when we are all Charlie, when we are all Paris, Mali or indeed wherever the hell the next sickening act of Islamic terrorism will occur, in these days when no city can outwit the toxic malevolence of Islamic State, the barbarism of the big guys in Syria is overlooked by the baying crowds who quite farcically appoint Israel as the purveyor of all that is wrong in the world.
Something stinks. BDS Stinks. It really stinks
Tricia Schwitzer serves on both the World WIZO Executive and the Executive of Friends of WIZO. Prior to joining the executive, Tricia was the assistant editor of the WIZO Review. Special projects undertaken for World WIZO include Israel advocacy, social media marketing material and promotional writing. Read her blog HERE.
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